There are many different types of electronic text based messaging. Electronic mail, e.g., email, is a store-and-forward method of writing, sending, receiving and saving messages that has become ubiquitous in today's society, used for both personal and business applications. Email is a system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) that can be used in a distributed computing environment over many different platforms and network systems. Real-time messaging systems, such as instant messaging, text messaging, and chat sessions, have gained tremendous popularity in recent years. In these systems, users communicate with one another in real time by exchanging messages over a network, such as the public Internet, a private intranet, or a cellular network. Interactive chat sessions may be accessed using a number of devices, including laptop computers, web-enabled cellular telephones, and so forth.
A snippet is a programming term for a small region or portion of re-usable source code, machine code, or text; however the term may also apply to an information selection including text, graphics, video, or a combination of the three. A computer user may copy a snippet of information, for example, from a document or web page to paste into an electronic message.